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Page 442
departure, but if it was so sweet between you, how could you allow a little thing like that to overset you?" Isobel wondered.
"I do not know," Alinor moaned. "I knew I had no cause to be jealous or angry. He never said there was no other woman. He never went to her but that one time. I have tried and tried to conquer my coldness."
"How?"
"I have not let a cross word pass my lips. Even when Ian is furious and says cruel and dreadful things, I do not quarrel with him. I answer softly or give him his way. Isobel, never in my life have I been so obedient, so compliant to any man. I fulfill his lightest wish, no matter how foolish, without hesitation or any complaint."
Alinor was staring at her hands in her lap and did not see the growing expression of horror and astonishment in Isobel's face. Her first view of it was when Isobel interrupted her catalogue of penances with a cry of "Oh, poor man!"
"How poor man?" Alinor snapped, bristling at the unappreciative remark. "Since when do you think sweet compliance a wrong?"
"Since you, against your nature, have adopted it. Compliance is for such hearts as mine, not for such as yours. Alinor, how could you! How long does Ian know you?"
"I am not sure. Some seventeen years. How can that matter?"
"And in all that time, how have you responded when you thought he was foolish or unreasonable?" Alinor was silent. Isobel nodded and put it into words. "You have told him, no doubt in language better fitted to one of your men-at-arms, what you thought of him, of his plans, of his brains, his ancestry, and everything else. And you did the same to Simon, right in front of Iansince you did not regard him as a stranger or one to whom polite behavior was necessary. Am I right?"

 
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